Massive Iron Man Update

Jon Favreau sits down with a group of journalists to talk, indepth, about the sequel to Iron Man:

IGN and a small number of journalists were able to sit down with writer/director and Iron Man mastermind Jon Favreau this afternoon for a lengthy and in-depth discussion on the upcoming sequel. The conversation was packed with fresh Iron Man news, including Favreau’s thoughts on War Machine, the Mandarin and the art of the comic-book sequel.

On Iron Man’s success…

FAVREAU: I was surprised by everything. I was surprised that the reviews were so strong, that it made so much money. I was surprised that Dark Knight had better reviews and made so much more money. On the one hand, it was a really unexpected, serendipitous summer. Oddly, when Dark Knight finally came out and was received the way it was, it was such a relief for me because I really felt like we went from nobody expecting anything to people starting to expect something…First, it was, “Who the hell cares about Marvel’s b-level heroes,” to Comic-Con where began building momentum, to this fever pitch where we were afraid that we’d disappoint and fail to meet expectations. And then Dark Knight comes in and makes history and all of a sudden, we felt the relief of that spotlight moving off of us from the guard tower. And now we have two years to lay low and work on the movie.

On what changed the tide of the superhero movie…

FAVREAU: I think 9/11. I think that was a game changer. I think people were looking for emotional simplicity, for escapism. There were superhero movies before Spider-Man, but Spider-Man hit at just the right time. It was the first way that we could get to those emotions. You couldn’t say anything about politics, about war, but you put somebody in a costume and say, “This is the good guy, this is the bad guy,” and you set that in a fantasy world or the Marvel universe, all of a sudden you allow people and kids and adults to experience those emotions. They’re dealing with real emotions in an escapist way. And that’s become more complex as we’ve become more comfortable seven years later, and you can have a movie like Dark Knight that shows people those things. There’s a line you can’t cross, but that line’s moving. But I’m glad that I was able to hit the crest of the genre and I feel safe now that we have a built in audience. But you wonder how that is going to change. Whoever gets voted in, I think there’s going to be an incredible transformation. I don’t know what it’s going to be, how the economy will affect that, or what the politics will look like. But change is coming, regardless, within our political system and our culture. And I wonder, as a moviemaker, how that’s going to effect audiences and what the national attitude is. It’s not something that turns on a dime.

On The Avengers movie…

FAVREAU: It starts off as, “Hey, wouldn’t it be fun if we stuck the Captain America shield in the background,” or “Hey, wouldn’t it be fun if we had Sam Jackson play Nick Fury.” That’s a nod to our fans. But now, between the shield and Nick Fury and the final scene of The Hulk, I’m like, “Wow, we’re really forming a team.” That scene is clearly not the day after Iron Man ended, so where does it fit? I don’t want to ignore it or say, as Marvel does, “It’s an alternate universe.” So how do you make it all work within that world? And Hulk was successful in keeping a tone that was not inconsistent with our film… In this case, you have Kevin Feige who wants to solve this puzzle. All that brain power makes you come up with interesting solutions. We have a pretty good gameplan. And there are conversations I’m having with them about The Avengers, where you’re not just dealing with tech; you’re dealing with inter-dimensional portals and all the shit that makes you jump the shark if you don’t handle it right. We were very restrained in how we used our superhero-ism in our movie, and we did that by keeping it all tech-based. Hulk was fairly tech-based. And then you get to Cap, where it’s a guy frozen in ice and you say, “Yeah, OK., I can buy that.” But then you get to Thor and it’s all out the window. So how you make that all feel of the same world is the challenge.

On The Mandarin as a live-action movie villain…

FAVREAU: The Mandarin is such a tricky character because everywhere you turn, it’s a minefield. You get into the mystical, Asian, dark arts and interdimensional travel and all the rings, and you say, “That’s cool; maybe we can make it authentic.” And then you see the trailer for The Mummy movie. That’s as authentic as it’s gonna get, but does it fit our film? I don’t know. What are your rules and how do you stay consistent? Because that’s what happens – people get desperate. How do you up the ante? And people start breaking their own rules and lose their identity. The Mandarin is the main guy, but we always remind ourselves that nobody likes the Emperor compared to Darth Vader. When the Emperor was this figure that you only saw obliquely, you’d say, “Shit, Darth Vader’s bowing to someone?” But then as he talked more, enough was enough. So the Mandarin, to have that kind of weight to him, it’s really a matter of using all the narrative tricks. But if you’re shooting these rings that have powers that could throw off the balance of the universe – how do you keep the whole thing together yet fulfill the expectations from the book? And a little bit goes a long way. There are a lot of other characters and countries that fit very well into our universe. The Iron Man cannon is becoming incredibly cogent and applicable once again.

On the script for Iron Man 2…

FAVREAU: The writing is coming along quite well. We’ve got Justin Theroux, who did Tropic Thunder. He echoes Downey’s tastes a lot. He’s an actor. He brings a real sense of fun. He’s never worked in the genre before, so he has that great newcommer’s enthusiasm. Then it’s about, here are the books. We’re breaking the story and pages are coming out, but it’s more of a conversation than actual writing…We’re looking – not so much for story, but for tone – at the Matt Fraction stuff. That series seems to be informed as much by our movie as by what happened with Iron Man before. It’s informed by current events. I’m very impressed by what he’s written.

On storytelling in comic-book films…

FAVREAU: There’s always a sense of “let’s save something for another movie.” But I think there’s a way to wade into it. In Spider-Man, he seems to be dealing with different issues in each film because they’re very modular. But we want to stretch our movie out like three chapters of the same story… These are smart audiences now with the capacity to understand long-form, complex storytelling, and you’re starting to see it more in TV and videogames. Movies are kind of what they are. It’s like a rock and roll song – you’ve got your thing, your bridge and your end. So how do you keep making rock and roll songs, but also do the White Album? How do you put it all together with other movies and make it something that’s a larger experience for people who are paying attention, but yet not so complex that if you’re not paying attention you’re going to not have fun? I’m a pretty smart audience member and I just don’t have that attention span, so I want to figure out if I can get a better version of that while still upping the ante of what you’re putting on the screen and the humor and the dialogue.

Click on the link below to read the entire indepth interview. It’s a good one

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